Babe the Blue Ox
from William B. Laughead's The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan (1922)
Origins:
Babe the Blue Ox is an animal companion to the Tall Tale figure Paul Bunyan, originating from logging camp stories. While Paul Bunyan's earliest known appearance in print was in a 1904 editorial in the Duluth News Tribune (though is referenced to have been told in oral stories since the 1880's), Babe wasn't formally introduced into the canon until 1910. Per J.E. Rockwell's Some Lumberjack Myths (1910):
That winter the camp ran out of beans, owing to the long spell of cold weather. A huge blue ox hauled all the wood and water for the camp. This ox measured eight ax-handles between the horns. The cook harnessed up the big blue ox and started for the nearest town, one hundred miles up the Little Onion river and across Little Onion Lake. They were on their way back the next day with the beans, when the spring thaw set in. The thermometer went from zero to eighty in the shade when the cook and the blue ox were crossing Little Onion Lake, and the entire outfit broke through the ice. The cook escaped drowning by climbing on the end of one of the ox’s horns, and standing there with just his nose out of water, from sundown to sunup when he was rescued by Paul Bunyan and a party from the camp.
Details, however, were sparse and prone to contradiction, depending on the story-teller. This can be seen in the letters sent in to The Seattle Star between January 20-25, 1913, in response to a letter printed by a "Miss Tenderfoot" asking for more information on Paul Bunyan and his Blue Ox:
Dear Miss Grey: Please print the following information for the benefit of ‘Miss Tenderfoot.’
I am surprised, astounded and chagrined to think that you, a Western girl, don't know about Paul Bunyon's ox.
Paul had a mill. In order that you may know where it was located, I will say he used the Pacific ocean for a log pound. Everything done at this famous mill was on a large scale. He had a 16-mule team skidding pickles, while nine — on roller skates greased the pancake griddle. I could occupy hours repeating the loggers' mythology of the Bunyan camp, but you asked about the ox.
Well, the crowning glory of this camp was the old blue ox, which measured 32 feet between the eyes. He has a chain made for this ox every link of which weighed 40 pounds. The first pull the ox made straightened this out into a solid iron bar, and the next pull brought the trunk of the tree and left the bark and limbs there. Yours truly,
OSCAR MOSSBACK.
Dear Miss Gray: In answer to ‘Miss Tenderfoot,’ will say that Paul Bunyan was an old-time logger in this neck of the woods.
Paul had a team of blue oxen that he used to log with, and they were big oxen, too. They ate nine bales of hay and drank three barrels of water every meal. It took a log off a five-foot tree to make a yoke for them. When they were hauling a log and it "hung up" on a three or four-foot stump, they would pull it right over.
Paul Bunyan logged off North Dakota before he came to Washington; that's why there is no timber or woods in that state. In other words, it is only a fable that the loggers like to tell a greenhorn. Truly yours,
W.J.H.
Dear Miss Gray: May I have the privilege of enlightening ‘Miss Tenderfoot’?
Paul Bunyan logged about 20 miles from the headwaters of the Big Onion river. In the winter we had the blue snow and white snow snakes. Now, that was some ox Paul had. It measured 7 feet between the eyes, and all he ate was sour pickles. Paul had six teams working day and night hauling sour pickles for his ox. The sleigh had 40 foot bunks, and they would build the loads so high they had to feed the top-loaders on toy balloons.
Paul had to put in a billion feet of logs that winter, and in the spring, just as he got the last load of logs to the landing, he ran out of sour pickles and the ox died.
‘ONE OF THE TOP-LOADERS.
I see the answers given by numerous loggers, lumberjacks and woodmen regarding Paul Bunyan's Blue Ox. These are entirely erroneous.
History does not state where or when this Blue Ox was born. When first spoken of in history, he was owned by one Robert Keagan who lived on the ‘Flowery banks of Bay Shilore.’ Bob Keagan having only 40 acres under cultivation, which being insufficient to keep this Ox, was obliged to sell him.
He was sole to Paul Bunyan, the ‘winter after the fall of the short oats.’ Paul Bunyan was logging at the time of the French river, on the north shore of Lake Huron.
It seems that this Blue Ox was more adapted for logging than farming. He lived on the underbrush, swamping his own roads, hauling from 75 to 160 logs a load, making trips to the banks of the river with such regularity that it was nothing for Paul Bunyan to log 26 million feet in one winter, only using the Blue Ox and the men necessary for falling and bucking.
Many men working in Washington at the present time have worked for Paul when he was logging with this Blue Ox and can vouch for this.
In the place of its being 32 feet between the eyes as Oscar Mooseback says, it had only one eye in the center of its head. Many of the eastern loggers were surprised at hearing of this Blue Ox being used here by Mr. Hood for digging the canal and being owned by Mr. Puget. This is a mistake, and I, for one, am ever ready to contradict such false assertions. This Blue Ox was never used in Washington, having died the ‘winter of the yellow snow’ in Michigan.
EASTERN LOGGER.
W.D. Harrigan even referred to the ox as being pink in his 1914 publication "Paul Bunyan's Oxen."
It wasn't until 1916 that both Paul Bunyan and Babe rose to into national prominence when William B. Laughead used them for an advertising pamphlet for the Red River Lumber Company, which would exaggerate prior stories and condense them into a single canon, the stories of which are well-known today. The 1922 edition, retooled as The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan, was quite popular, selling out, eventually having 13 editions by 1957.